When the images dissolved from my mind, I once again found myself in an unenviable position. I now crouched in front of the lavatory’s sink basin as if it was a shrine. My moist fingertips were suctioned onto the sink’s porcelain surface like an octopus’s tentacles. After several seconds, I realized that most of the students were still outside. This fire drill seemed excessively long, but not much longer than any of the others sprung upon us in recent weeks. At least I had a few additional minutes to recompose myself; two handfuls of lukewarm water splashed against my face proved refreshing enough for me to move forward.
I then exited the lavatory and instinctively proceeded toward the main office. At some point I figured an officious administrator would’ve noticed me wandering around the vacated hallways and issued a reminder of my professional duties as a teacher. But no one even nudged a head out from behind the office’s door, and I almost convinced myself that the alarm signified a genuine emergency. I didn’t even see the custodian moseying about with his broom or mop, and he generally had a flair for finding me when no one else was around.
Just as I strolled past the office’s window, however, I noticed a shadow’s movement from behind the large redwood desk. Curiosity held me in place as if I had stepped into a vat of Super-Glue. My hesitation proved telling, or at least generated some suspicion. Apparently, sultry secretaries to the principal were exempt from following evacuation procedures. I noticed Mrs. Finnegan primping her clothing like a cat grooming its fur. This in itself was not an unusual custom for the saucy woman; some doubted that her duties required anything more arduous than picking lint from her skintight sweaters and mini-dresses. Mrs. Finnegan obviously didn’t see me looking at her through the glass partition or she might’ve employed a more discreet method of fastening the top three buttons on her red blouse. Suddenly, the custodian’s inferences about her escapades with the principal didn’t seem so implausible. By my estimation, this drill had effectively cleared the building for at least fifteen minutes. This was reason enough for me to investigate the matter further.
As I entered the office I pretended to overlook the secretary as she farded her cheekbones with a compact of blush stored directly beside her keyboard. Although Mrs. Chrissie Finnegan hadn’t worked at the high school for more than four months, she had the reputation of a seasoned seductress among the nomadic teachers by the end of her second week on the job. By conventional standards, she was an attractive woman, but perhaps a bit washed-out at close range. It was rumored that she had enough Botox injected into her temples and lips to smooth an old elephant’s skin. Her face was akin to a latex facsimile of what she might’ve looked like fifteen years ago. The lady’s lustrous black coif was arguably her most striking feature, but few hadn’t tittered about how she lassoed it over her shoulders in braided pigtails as if competing for a spot on a 1975 cheerleading squad.
Perhaps I never really gave myself a chance to get to know Mrs. Finnegan. Unlike many of my colleagues, I wasn’t infatuated with her saccharine disposition. And her ballooned, often-exposed bosom appeared as artificially enhanced as the rest of her offerings. Upon seeing her on this occasion, however, I noticed a detail that I must’ve overlooked a hundred times previously. On her left ring finger, she wore a pear-shaped diamond wedding band. Today, the ring’s gold band was visible, but she had apparently turned the jewel to the front side of her hand, concealing it within her palm. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if my wife engaged in a similar strategy in order to screen her marital status. Another piece of Mrs. Finnegan’s jewelry caught my eye, too. It was a coral bracelet dangling loosely on her right wrist. I noticed her admiring it whenever she had an opportunity. This thought by itself made it impossible for me to greet Mrs. Finnegan with anything more pleasant than a perfunctory nod of my chin.
Before this moment I might’ve been content to remain aloof to this school’s scandalous secrets. After all, if anyone stared for too long in the direct sunlight, he was sure to get burned. Mrs. Finnegan’s shenanigans shouldn’t have mattered to me at all, and I learned many years ago that it was a prudent practice to keep the business of work related only to work. If Principal Lemus and his secretary wanted to compromise their professional credibility with an interoffice affair, who was I to render judgment? But even with this notion firmly implanted, I couldn’t pull myself away from the front desk.
Of course this secretary was too preoccupied preening herself to recognize any attempt on my part to communicate with her. After she applied her makeup, the woman retrieved a bottle of moisturizer from her desk and slathered it on her forearms and legs respectively. This lotion smelled oddly familiar to me, and I almost forgot why I bothered to stop here. Mrs. Finnegan eventually acknowledged my presence with a perturbed expression.
“Aren’t you supposed to be outside with your students, Mr. Cobbs?” she questioned. Her voice revealed a hint of apprehension, but I still felt strangely intoxicated by her moisturizer’s delightful fragrance.
“Yes,” I said, “but I was making sure that this was just a drill. It seems like the kids have been out there a long time.”
Mrs. Finnegan’s eyes shifted slyly toward the door of Principal Lemus’s office before she checked the time on her spangled wristwatch. I still watched her smear the remnants of creamy lotion into her alabaster calves. “Sometimes these things take longer than you might expect,” she uttered. “So is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Maybe,” I replied, motioning to the plastic container of moisturizer she set on her desk’s corner. “What’s that stuff called?”
She seemed initially put off by my question, but answered, “Why? Do you like it?”
“I’m not sure, but it smells like something my wife uses on her skin.”
Mrs. Finnegan squirted another dollop of cream into her palms and proceeded to blend it between her narrow fingers. “Your wife must have good taste, at least in moisturizers. It’s cucumber and melon scented.”
“Cucumber?” I repeated, purposely overlooking her snide comment.
“And melon,” she emphasized.
I stood dumbfounded for a moment, and I’m sure my puzzlement over such a menial aspect must’ve baffled the secretary. In order to expedite my departure, she attempted to busy herself by perching her French-manicured fingertips on the desktop’s keyboard. I wouldn’t have known the name of this white-tipped design had I not asked my wife about her own newly styled fingernails a few months ago. In any event, Mrs. Finnegan was not shy about making my annoyance to her routine known.
“If there’s nothing else on your mind, Mr. Cobbs, I do have quite a bit of work to get done today,” she remarked.
“Yes, of course you do,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to it now.”
Perhaps I utilized my own brand of mockery with this response, and it was quite enough to momentarily shush Mrs. Finnegan. I didn’t loiter around the office to wait for her rebuttal. Instead, I retreated to the hallway and relished the few moments of calmness while the students were still outside. Any hope for a respite on my part today, however, proved to be as unlikely as my kids submitting their homework on time. The custodian’s evocative whistling soon besieged my quietude, which had unsettled me for more reasons than I presently understood. He sauntered into the corridor with his broom gliding over the tiles as smoothly as a Zamboni skimming across a pad of ice. A distinct look of satisfaction contorted his brow; it was a gaze that denoted his mischievous mood.
His voice boomed like detonated dynamite in the hallway. “Well, call me mister bonkers now, Cobbs, but it looks like you just got back from a wake.” At this point, a funeral would’ve been preferable reprieve from the events of this day. The custodian’s citron-colored eyes had already zeroed in on the main office’s doors. I summoned for his silence in the same manner that I gesticulated to a gang of rowdy teenagers. Unsurprisingly, raising an index finger across the middle portion of my pursed lips proved just as useless of a device in this instance.
“Looks like Chri
ssie Finnegan is up to her tricks again,” he bellowed in a lyrical tone.
“Keep your voice down,” I chided him. “She’ll hear you, or worse yet—Lemus will hear you. I think he’s still in his office.”
The custodian cast a glance at the secretary through the plate glass window. “It seems that my theory on our Thursday morning fire drills remains unblemished, does it not?”
“I’m not ready to concede to anything yet.”
He smiled at my gullibility before saying, “It’s okay to be right. What’s not okay is always pretending to be wrong.” His eyes then stared more fixatedly on the secretary as she proceeded to apply additional moisturizer to her forearms. “Now that’s one lady who loves her lotion,” he remarked. “Sweet scent too, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, trust me, odors can be as deceiving as people.”
“That’s not for me to decide,” I returned. “In fact, I don’t really care what going on in that office between Lemus and Mrs. Finnegan. It’s not my business.”
“You’re probably right. Some righteous people might pass judgment because she’s a married woman, and of course our good principal is spoken for, too. But, as you so astutely said, why should anyone give a crap? It’s not like either of our spouses are screwing around on us, right?”
“Sometimes you have to figure out things on your own.”
“You’re learning more by the minute. You know, there may still be a glimmer of hope for you, Cobbs.”
The custodian then tilted his nose into the air in an exaggerated bid to summon my attention toward the secretary’s doings. He looked like a boy inhaling the savory fumes of a peach pie cooling on a windowsill.
“Mmmm, you catch a whiff of that air?”
I humored the custodian by acknowledging the aroma seeping beneath the office’s door. But what had only moments ago affected my olfactory senses agreeably now turned my stomach as sour as a bad egg. There was something stirring in the air other than Mrs. Finnegan’s body lotion.
“It’s cucumber,” said the custodian. “Invigorating, especially for the skin beneath the eyes. But cucumbers can be as deadly as they are delicious.”
“Oh, really?” I smirked, perhaps for the first time since being in his company. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard about anyone being killed by a cucumber.”
“Well, maybe you haven’t heard all there is to know. When I was just a tyke no higher than an immature cornstalk, I can remember my old man telling me about that particular scent. He said if I was ever out walking in the woods and smelled fresh cucumbers, then I should be on a keen lookout for snakes, particularly the northern cooper head. When it’s riled or aroused, that viper gives off that same tang as Mrs. Finnegan’s lotion.”
“You know, my father used to tell me that same myth when I was about ten-years-old. A boy didn’t question his father’s tales back in those days, so everything sounded legit.”
“A myth? That’s a surefire way to squelch all the intrigue, isn’t it?”
“Hate to break the news to you, but cooper heads don’t smell like cucumbers, unless they’re denned in a cucumber patch.”
“Is that so?”
“Sorry to say it is.”
“Don’t be so glib with what you think you know. As far as I can tell, there’s a bit of truth in every legend. Let’s use our little office mate Chrissie Finnegan as a prime example. Do you think there’s a snake slithering nearby when she’s lathering that lotion on her lovely loins?” The custodian’s eyes gradually shifted toward Principal Lemus’s closed office door. “Snakes come in all forms and sizes, you know.”
“Okay. You got me on that one.”
The custodian relished in the minor conquests of his day, and it hardly seemed worth an effort to dispute him on this point. Moreover, it was now nearly third period and I had other obligations to fulfill. I then excused myself as politely as possible from my present company and continued along the hallway. I should’ve realized that the custodian hadn’t yet dished out a full plate of his annotations.
“Don’t forget about your appointment,” he advised, barely holding back a full-fledged grin. “With the seniors having their assembly next period, it should give you some extra time to spend with your buddy Mr. Winger.”
I paused to muse over the custodian’s words, but I drew nothing from them that enabled me to make good sense of his advice. I almost forgot about my promise to meet with Shawn Winger before fourth period. But I was more concerned with the custodian’s knowledge of my unspoken intentions. “Excuse me,” I said, stopping to face him. “How did you find out about my planned meeting with Mr. Winger?”
The custodian resumed sweeping the floor at a casual pace. His reluctance to answer me indicated the only likely explanation for his insight. “We’re you reading my emails?” I asked.
“Let’s not get all emotional about this.” he responded coolly.
“Don’t tell me how to act, okay? Now, I asked you a simple question. Were you or were you not reading my private mail?”
“When a man deludes himself with nonsense, almost anything sounds plausible,” he replied. “But let me you remind you, Cobbs, I’m not exactly head chief on the totem pole around this place. Besides, what makes you think I have the time, skill, or desire to rifle through your mail, if in fact it was even feasible?”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said, bitterly. “If you didn’t read my mail, how did you find out about my appointment with Mr. Winger?”
The custodian merely chuckled at my inquest as if I was nothing more intimidating than a petulant ninth-grader. By now it was already evident that I had no ability to coax anything from this man other than what he wished to reveal. He swept at the floor with his broom as if he was an artist painting a canvas; his eyes remained focused on something I couldn’t perceive.
“You seem to know something quirky about everyone in this school,” I persisted. As I uttered these words, I again sensed an irregular odor seeping off the custodian’s overalls. Mrs. Finnegan’s cucumber and melon fragrance suddenly seemed smothered by a dense industrial aroma. “You don’t smell that?” I asked him, gulping the air just as he had demonstrated minutes ago.
“Careful,” the custodian chimed tauntingly. “You know what happened to the man who fell in love with the scent of cucumbers, don’t you?”
“I don’t know any such story.”
“Ah, well, fortunately I have a satchel in my memory to stuff such things. Anyhow, such a man might stride barefoot through a cucumber patch and expect to come out unbitten on the other side.”
“I’m not talking about cucumbers,” I insisted, still snuffling the fumes. “It’s something else, maybe like a chemical or something toxic.”
“Sorry. I only have a nose for things close to my heart.” The custodian forced another glance through the window at the secretary. She still wasn’t doing anything related to the functions of a school.
“You go right ahead and keep sweeping those floors,” I told him defiantly. “But I’m going to find out about you before this day is over.”
“That’s precisely what I was hoping for.” The custodian didn’t look at me in these seconds. He instead returned to his pastime of whistling, but this time the tune was different. He substituted Rachmaninoff’s music with another offering. This song was hardly on the same level in terms of classical renditions, but nevertheless, equally recognizable. In terms of quality, the custodian whistled more fluidly than a mine full of animated dwarfs. And in this instance, he did so with unexpected merriment.
“I know that song,” I called out to him as if he should’ve been awed by my feat. “It’s Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, right?”
The custodian paused and wet his lips briefly before replying, “My oh my, you’re right on the money.” He then glanced toward the nearest exit’s windows, where evidence of this rainy weather was still on full display. “But it’s not such a beautiful day, is it, Cobbs?”
/> “That I can’t argue.”
“Well, it’s reason enough to invite a little cheer around here. At any rate, James Baskett could sure belt out a snappy tune, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Oh, come on, Cobbs, don’t disappoint me now. He’s the fellow who crooned the song in Disney’s best-kept secret from 1946, ‘Song of the South’.”
“Why do you know so much about nothing?”
“Another man’s nothing is someone’s something. Besides, it’s a catchy melody, and I particularly liked the young boy who sang along with Baskett in the film. He had a bit more of a career than ol’ James, but not by a heck of a lot.”
“I don’t remember him either,” I declared, seeing little relevance in our present line of discourse.
“Ah, well, it’s a terrible shame, really. The kid actor’s name was Bobby Driscoll. You might remember him better from when he played the part of Jim Hawkins in ‘Treasure Island.’ That’s one of my favorites. Yo-ho-ho! Anyhow, poor Bobby never really grew up, did he?”
“I guess not,” I remembered. In my mind I was already thinking about Harold Wagner’s earlier allusion to ‘Peter Pan’, but I didn’t want to delve any further into this matter at the moment. I simply watched the custodian, whistling as only he could, and almost skipping with his broom as he pushed it in a serpentine pattern down the dimly lit corridor. The still unidentified odor vanished gradually with him, but the smell of cucumbers remained as potent as before.
Chapter 24
9:06 A.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 23